For Love and Money

A behind-the-scenes look at a NASCAR racing crew - what they do, what they can earn.

July 2006 By BOB ZELLER Photos By CIA STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY/TOM COPELAND

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We start at the bottom with a 19-year-old kid, John Stewart, fresh out of high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, who packs his bags and moves to North Carolina to chase his dream of a racing career. He'll do anything to get on the other side of the fence-he'll sweep floors, clean tools, wash race cars.

It's the classic way to break into stock-car racing and is still valid today. A young Robin Pemberton started this way in 1979, and today he's NASCAR's vice-president of competition. And that's the road Stewart traveled when he was hired last year by the famous Wood Brothers Racing ream.

When Car and Driver last visited the Woods in 2001 [Sport: "The Righteous Wood Brothers, C/D, July 2001], they were still tucked away in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains in their beloved hometown of Stuart, Virginia, having opened a sprawling new shop and museum there in the 1990s. But by 2004, only the museum was left. To compete in NASCAR, the Woods realized they had to be in or around Charlotte, North Carolina, with its deep pool of racing talent. So that's where the team relocated in 2004.

During their glory years in the '60s, when they became known worldwide for their speedy pit stops, and later when they dominated the superspeedways in the 1970s with drivers David Pearson and Cale Yarborough, the Wood Brothers made do with a half-dozen workers, four of them named Wood. Today, Wood Brothers Racing, which merged with Tad Geschickter's ST Motorsports last year to form Wood Brothers/JTG Racing, has more than 120 employees spread over 130,000 square feet in a former plastics factory along U.S. 49 in Harrisburg, North Carolina. They field five teams: the original Wood Brothers Nextel Cup No. 21 Ford, ST Motorports' original two Busch Series teams, and two NASCAR Craftsman Truck teams.

But it's been a long dry spell for stock-car racing's oldest continuously operating team. The No. 21 Ford was last in victory lane with former driver Elliott Sadler at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2003. Of the Wood Brothers' 96 victories, three have come in the past 15 years. For 2006, veteran Ken Schrader is behind the wheel, and his most recent victory came 15 years ago. Then again, there's almost nothing left on the Nextel Cup dinner table after Roush Racing, Hendrick Motorsports, and Joe Gibbs Racing finish feasting. Together, they won 30 of 36 races last season. Teams far larger and more formidable than the Wood Brothers struggled, too. Roger Penske raced three Cup cars in 2005 and came away with a lone victory. The team of Chip Ganassi and Felix Sabates fielded three cars and didn't win a single race.

Whether or not the expansion yields results, today's Wood Brothers team more closely resembles the Hendrick operation than the traditional team that carried the sport for so many years. Up and down the personnel roster, the sport is driven by key people in key positions, many of whom don't lay a hand on the car. Here's a look at what they do, and the estimated pay scale of these positions.

John Stewart, Tire Specialist

Still legally too young to have a beer, but with more than a year under his belt as a full-time team member, Stewart, now 20, is already climbing the ladder, having been promoted from floor sweeper to tire specialist.

It's his job to pick up the team's tires at the Goodyear garage on Friday and ride herd over them through the weekend, adjusting tire pressures, scraping track grit and rubber off tires with minor wear, and recording tire-performance statistics, among other tasks.

"At the shop, I do what we call 'turn-around,'" Stewart says. "I restock the tool boxes and all the parts that need to be with the box. I clean everything that needs to be cleaned. I help unload and load the hauler. I do all the paperwork from the weekend—all the notes about tire pressures and such. All that stuff gets put on computer. I help the truck driver restock and load the truck. And when I get caught up on things that I do, I go into the fab shop and give the guys a hand there if they need help."

Two years ago, Stewart was still in high school. He'd grown up in a family of race fans and had been in the stands at every Pocono race since 1995. After graduating from Bishop Hoban High School in Wilkes- Barre in 2004, Stewart took a course in motorsports technology at the local community college. "But I just felt like to get into this business you needed to be here in North Carolina," he says. "So I got up the guts to pick up and move down here."

He arrived in January 2005 with little more than enthusiasm and a willingness to work, and moved in with a cousin. His interview with Len Wood led to a job that March. "You see guys all the time down here looking for entry-level positions," Stewart says. "Some of them, like me, luck out and get in. Some don't. I've heard of guys working two or three weeks and getting out. Some people take it and run with it and do really well. I like to think I've done pretty well since I started."

Stewart is learning the rhythms of the race garage—the mad rush to get the car ready, followed immediately by the interminable wait in the inspection line. Sometimes while he's waiting, he'll look at the fans on the other side of the garage fence and think to himself, "Man, I used to be like that."

Tire specialists on typical Nextel Cup teams are said to average between $50,000 and $60,000 a year. (Note: Figures herein are provided by two sources not by the Wood team, which declined to discuss salaries.)

Dwayne Doucette, Car Chief

Like Stewart, car chief Dwayne Doucette is a transplanted Yankee, except Doucette had considerable racing experience working on late-model and Busch North cars before he moved south from Lee, New Hampshire, late in 2001.

At 29, Doucette is the car chief for the No. 21 Ford. The duties of a car chief years ago were part of the crew chief's job, but as car preparation became more detailed, a need developed for a lower-level supervisor whose primary responsibility is the car itself. Doucette directs the half-dozen crewmen who work on the car, including several mechanics, a shock-absorber specialist, and the tire specialist.

"At the track, I'm responsible for getting the car through technical inspection, making sure it fits the templates and meets all the NASCAR weights. When the crew chief tells me to change certain parts of the car, I'm responsible for making sure that gets done, whether I do it or I get a mechanic to do it," Doucette says.

On race morning, he posts a long checklist of car-preparation tasks. "Any one mechanic probably has 15 to 25 to as many as 40 different things to do on his list, and there will be four guys working off the overall checklist," he notes. "Basically, you put a wrench on anything that can take a wrench, and you look at it and give it a thorough inspection. If there's any question whether this part or that will last 500 miles, you put something new on."

During a race, Doucette comes over the wall during pit stops as the rear-tire carrier. At his previous job at FitzBradshaw Racing, Doucette became close friends with his rear-tire changer, Josh Kirk. Soon, they realized they were as marketable as an over-the-wall pair as they were as individual crewmen, and together they were hired by the Wood Brothers in December 2004. Kirk has since moved to Hendrick Motorsports, but Doucette, as car chief, has remained.

Typical NASCAR Nextel Cup car chiefs are said to earn $110,000 to $130,000 a year.

Hoyt Overbagh, Team Engineer

At 59, Hoyt Overbagh is one of the oldest team engineers in NASCAR. A native of Buffalo, New York, Overbagh ironically has no engineering degree, although he's well educated, with a bachelor's degree in science and a master's degree in economics from Virginia State University. From 1972 to 1997, he worked at Reynolds's massive automotive research facility in Richmond, Virginia, which employed more than 1000 people. In a sudden cost-cutting move in 1997, the entire operation was shut down and everyone was let go, "from the floor sweeper to the vice-president," Overbagh said.

"The whole time, I had a sports-car team and raced in the 24 Hours of Daytona, at Sebring, and in Trans-Am," he says. He also lent a hand to longtime Richmond NASCAR team owner Junie Donlavey.

Team engineers were already an essential element of many NASCAR operations when Overbagh moved to North Carolina and became owner/driver Ricky Rudd's engineer in 1999. There, he first began working with Michael "Fatback" McSwain, who was Rudd's crew chief. They've been together pretty much ever since.

As team engineer, Overbagh sees himself as someone the crew chief "can turn to who has an opinion based on data." It's his job to understand vehicle dynamics, aerodynamics, and engine technology based on hard data gathered from past races, research, test sessions, computer simulations, and other sources.

"Fatback is very receptive to the facts and data we generate, so the technology goes into our cars really quickly," he says. "Having worked for Gibbs, which was a really big organization, I think the information was slower being fitted into the race cars."

In 2005, Overbagh was the team's only engineer. Now Wood Brothers/JTG has a team of a half-dozen engineers—two for the No. 21 car and one each for the rest of the teams—and an active intern program. "We take kids from UNC-Charlotte and other area colleges and train them in 10 different areas [from data acquisition and entry to practical trackside experience] where we critically need expertise."

NASCAR Nextel Cup team engineers are said to earn anywhere from $120,000 to $300,000 a year.

David Hyder, Crew Chief

When driver Ken Schrader left BAM Racing at the end of 2005 and signed with Wood Brothers/JTG to drive the No. 21 Ford for the 2006 Nextel Cup season, he brought his BAM crew chief, David Hyder, with him. They already communicated well together, and as far as co-owner Eddie Wood was concerned, that was half the battle in finding a replacement for McSwain, who was moving up the company ladder to become the overall competition director.

Hyder, 38, talked like a driver, since he'd spent most of his young life behind the wheel, starting with go-karts at the age of nine and eventually moving into late-model and USAR Hooters Pro Cup stock cars. A native of High Point, North Carolina, Hyder has always lived in the area and commutes to the shop at Harrisburg, about an hour south.

Hyder's primary responsibility is the chassis setup. "My job is to find out how [the driver] wants the car to lay when getting into the corner—whether he wants it on the right side or the left side," he says. "You just have to really learn what they want the car to feel like." Once he learns that, then he tries to figure out how to stretch the limits and find the maximum speed.

Good rapport between the driver and crew chief is essential. "When you learn their personality and they learn yours, you get a better understanding what is going on with each other without really having to say it," Hyder says.

"Having Hyder, who is someone I've already worked with and have a lot of confidence in, is a tremendous help," Schrader says. The greater challenge has been fitting McSwain, the former crew chief, into the equation.

As Schrader explained in an online fan chat earlier this year: "It's not like [Fatback] is wanting to give up everything he's been doing for years. He looks at stuff the way he did it, and David and I are wanting to do stuff the way we did. You know, it is just a deal where you sit down and get it all worked out. We're getting there. There are always bumps along the way, but we're getting her done."

Typical NASCAR Nextel Cup crew chiefs are said to earn $200,000 and up, with the top crew chiefs receiving $1 million a year.

Michael "Fatback" McSwain, Competition Director

McSwain found his way into NASCAR through the now-defunct Sportsman Series, working with an old-line mechanic and fabricator named Robert Gee, who at one time was Dale Earnhardt's father-in-law and is Dale Junior's maternal grandfather.

McSwain, 39, grew up in Lattimore, North Carolina. "Me and my dad raced, and to help subsidize our racing, we worked on other people's cars," he says. "I ended up being better at that than as a driver."

He became a NASCAR crew chief in 1997 with car owner Richard Jackson and won races with both Ricky Rudd and Bobby Labonte before joining the Wood Brothers in August 2004 after getting fired as Labonte's crew chief during a slump at Gibbs Racing.

As competition director, McSwain supervises and directs the efforts of all five Wood Brothers/JTG teams. The Woods are planning a second Nextel Cup team in 2007, and McSwain will head it. "My time is fairly equally divided among the five teams," he said. "I try to concentrate on where the biggest need is. I probably act more as a consultant for everyone than as their supervisor." He sees his role, in part, as that of a teacher. His greatest satisfaction is "to give someone the knowledge that was given to me — to continue the cycle."

NASCAR competition directors with overall responsibility over multiple teams are said to make $150,000 to $250,000 a year.